ARCHIVE OF BEARDS BREWERY, LEWES

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Beards Brewery

Windus Beard and Company

Beard Browning Woodroffe and Company

LIST OF LICENSED PREMISES

THE RECORDS

ADMINISTRATIVE RECORDS

BBR/1/1 Letters and Papers

BBR/1/2 Letter Books

BBR/1/3 Beard Family Papers

BBR/1/4 Various

BBR/1/5 Printed Reference Books

BREWING AND STOCK RECORDS

BBR/2/1 Brewing Journals

BBR/2/2 Stock Records

BBR/2/3 Beer Books

ACCOUNTING RECORDS

BBR/3/1 Bought Ledgers

BBR/3/2 Sales Ledgers

BBR/3/3 Sales Books

BBR/3/4 Purchase Journals: Ingredients

BBR/3/5 Purchase Journals: Bottling

BBR/3/6 Purchase Books

BBR/3/7 Cash Received Books

BBR/3/8 Cash Payments Books

BBR/3/9 Petty Cash Books

BBR/3/10 Journal

BBR/3/11 Various Accounts

BBR/3/12 Day Books

BBR/3/13 Warehouse Books

BBR/3/14 Club Books

BBR/3/15 Salaries Books

PROPERTY RECORDS

BBR/4/1 Loans

BBR/4/2 Rents

BBR/4/3 Maintenance Records

BBR/4/4 Tenancy Agreements etc: Licensed Premises

BBR/4/5 Tenancy Agreements etc: Other Premises

BBR/4/6 Insurance Policies

BBR/4/7 Property: Various

BBR/4/8 Licensed Premises: Various

WINE AND SPIRIT STORE RECORDS

Pre-Incorporation

BBR/5/1 Windus Beard and Company

BBR/5/2 Browning Woodroffe and Company

BBR/5/3 Beard Browning Woodroffe and Company

Post-Incorporation

BBR/5/4 Bought Ledgers

BBR/5/5 Sales Ledgers: 'A' Series

BBR/5/6 Sales Ledgers: 'B' Series

BBR/5/7 Cash Books

BBR/5/8 Stock Records

BBR/5/9 Day Books

BBR/5/10 Warehouse Books: Main Series

BBR/5/11 Warehouse Books: Second Series

BBR/5/12 Cash Sales Books

BBR/5/13 Returns Books

<p>See ACC 7719 for pre-registration deeds of public houses formerly of Beards of Sussex Group Ltd, 19th &amp; 20th centuries, deposited by Greene, King Ltd; and AMS 4648, for a pedigree of the Beard family of Rottingdean, Brighton, Lewes, Ovingdean, and Smithfield London; c. 1937</p>

• <corpname>Beard and Company Ltd, Lewes, brewers c1820-1902</corpname>
• <corpname>Windus Beard and Company, Lewes c1836-1902</corpname>
• <corpname>Browning, Woodroffe and Company, Lewes c1848</corpname>
• <corpname>Beard, Browning, Woodroffe and Company, -1902 Lewes c1902-</corpname>

Records are open for consultation unless otherwise indicated

Deposited in May 1984 by Beard and Company (Lewes) Ltd, 12 Fisher Street (ACC 4259), except BBR/3/1/3 and 3/6/6 which were deposited in Dec 1991 (ACC 5817)

Beards Brewery

The Beard Family was a prosperous one which had lived at Rottingdean from at least the 16th century. The family papers are deposited in the Record Office (see BRD). Early in the 19th century the then head of the family, Thomas Beard, acquired an interest in the century-old Star Lane Brewery at Lewes, which then traded under the name of Chitty and Company

In its earliest years the Brewery was associated with the name of Obadiah Elliott, a Hartfield man who married in Lewes in 1723 and appears as the owner of the Brewery in Star Lane (now Fisher Street) by 1741 (rate books of St John sub Castro). He died in 1775, and was the father of the Lewes antiquary-lawyer, John Elliott. By about 1792 Chrusophilus Chitty was the owner, remaining so for some years. In 1811 he surrendered copyhold premises associated with the Brewery to Thomas Beard before the Lewes Borough (manorial) court (ADA 160), but the name Chitty and Company was still in use in 1812, though by 1817 (Land Tax) it was Chitty and Beard. By 1820/1821 the firm was known as Beard and Company, though the last Chitty, Charles Henry, remained a partner until 1845

Some 19th century partnership documents are preserved in the LHL deposit (uncatalogued). They make it clear that Thomas Beard, who remained owner of the Brewery until his death in 1847, retired from active business in 1825, leasing his interests to a copartnership of his second son, Edward Beard, and Charles Henry Chitty. Chitty withdrew in 1845, and three years later Edward took in as partner his nephew William Beard (son of his brother Nathaniel). William had already worked for the firm for about ten years, and remained an active partner until shortly before his death in 1905 at the age of 93 (see his extensive obituary and portrait in the 'Sussex Express', 16 Dec 1905). Sometime in the 1830's Thomas Beard purchased from the devisees of Arthur Edward Burtenshaw Windus (died 1832) the latter's wine and spirit business in St Michael's, Lewes, which was subsequently to trade in parallel with the Brewery as Windus Beard and Company (see below)

In 1859 Edward's son Thomas Edward Beard became a partner, Edward himself becoming inactive because of illness (he died in 1868; see his will, BRD 11/6). After T E Beard's own death, he was succeeded (in 1886) by his son Charles Ernest Beard, but financial difficulties connected with horse racing caused his retirement in 1893, when William Beard entered a new partnership with another son of T E Beard, George Ravenhill Beard (copy partnership documents will be found in BBR/1/1/2). G R Beard was controlling Beards in 1936 when it became a limited company - Beard and Company (Lewes) Limited, and only died in 1953. In 1900 Beards purchased five public houses in the Hailsham area, as well as Browning and Woodroffe, Wine and Spirit merchants of Lewes and Brighton (see below)

Beards continued to brew beer at Fisher Street (formerly Star Lane) until the end of 1958, when an agreement was reached with Harveys of Lewes whereby the latter firm brewed for both concerns. Beards continued to occupy the old brewery premises in Lewes until 1985, when they moved their headquarters to Hailsham. The firm subsequently traded as Beards of Sussex Group Ltd and in 1999 were taken over by Greene, King Ltd

Windus Beard and Company

As noted above, Windus Beard and Company was formed (probably in about 1836) when Thomas Beard purchased an existing wine and spirit business from the devisees of Arthur Windus see also HIL 6/23/1-20, and BRD 11/6, for reference). The business was in St Swithins Lane, in St Michael's parish, Lewes, and a few interesting records survive here. It was run in parallel with the Brewery, and its ownership was the same. Probably about 1902 the firm was merged with Browning and Woodroffe, which had been purchased in 1900, trading henceforward as Beard Browning Woodroffe and Company (qv)

Beard, Browning, Woodroffe and Company

The Brownings were a family well-connected in the wine and spirit trade. William Shipton Browning was a distiller at Langley, Buckinghamshire, in the first half of the 19th century, and was (inter alia) the father of the celebrated Oscar Browning of Eton College. Also connected was the firm of Browning, Wood and Fox, distillers, of Worship Lane, London

By 1848 George Browning of Southover, brother of William Shipton Browning, was trading in Lewes as a wine and spirit merchant (cf HIL 6/80/10), probably in Watergate Lane. He retired in about 1865 to Hove, where he died in about 1872, and the business was taken over by his nephew, another son of W S Browning, Arthur Henry Browning, who ran it until his death in 1880 (see obituary in the 'Sussex Express', 19 Jun 1880). Thereafter an F G Browning was briefly involved in the business, but 1884 seems to mark the end of active Browning participation. Another name, that of Henry Long Woodroffe, appears in 1883, and from about this time the firm traded as Browning and Woodroffe. Also about then it changed its address from Watergate Lane to the Corn Exchange Buildings in Lewes High Street. In association, and dating from before 1878, there was also a wine house ('The Old Brighton Wine House') at 157 Western Road, Brighton, which survived until Jun 1915

In 1900 the Company was taken over by William Beard and George Ravenhill Beard, the partners in Beard's Brewery, and a year or so later the business was merged with that of Beard's own wine and spirit concern, Windus Beard and Company, to trade henceforward in the Corn Exchange Buildings as Beard, Browning, Woodroffe and Company. In 1905 William Beard died. About 1930 the Company moved to new premises at 12 Fisher Street, Lewes, and for a short time was known as Beard, Browning and Company, before it was formally included in Beard and Company (Lewes) Limited in 1936. For many years, however, much of the administration of the two Beard companies had been undertaken jointly. A number of records survive, those of pre-1936 trading going back to 1884 (private ledgers), and from 1936 onwards there is a very complete series of trading records for the wine and spirit store. This closed in Fisher Street in 1985

LIST OF LICENSED PREMISES

Dates indicate Beards ownership or leasing; they are taken from a wide variety of sources

ARDINGLY

Greyhound, Hapstead Green: (1825)-(1980)

BALCOMBE

Norfolk Arms (to 1920, then Cowdray Arms): (1825)-(1980)

BATTLE

Netherfield Arms, Netherfield: 1923 (bought)-(1969)

BRIGHTON

Brighton Arms, Essex Street: 1825-(1888) (was Tamplin and Sons by 1896, see TAM; for title deeds 1801-1913, see HIL 2/38/1-21

Cavendish Arms, Regent Street: (1859)-1919 (sold to Abbey and Sons)

Joiners Arms, Marlborough Place: (fl 1888)

North Star, Brunswick Place North: (fl 1888)

BURWASH

Bell: (1888)-(1980)

CHAILEY

Kings Head, North Common: (1854)-(1980)

Swan: (fl 1825)

CHARLWOOD see EAST GRINSTEAD

CHIDDINGLY

Bat and Ball: (fl 1825)

Six Bells: 1900-(1940)

CHILTINGTON, EAST

(Jolly) Sportsman (sometime Old Thatch): (1888)-(1980)

CRAWLEY DOWN see WORTH

DALLINGTON

Swan: (1958)-(1980)

DICKER see HELLINGLY

EASTBOURNE

Beachy Head Hotel, Beachy Head: (1958)-(1965)

EWHURST

Castle: (1913)-1964)

FOREST ROW see EAST GRINSTEAD

FRESHFIELD see LINDFIELD

GRINSTEAD, EAST

Half Moon, Charlwood, Forest Row: (1929)-(1940)

HAILSHAM

Brewers Arms: (bought 1900)

HEATHFIELD

Barley Mow, Punnetts Town: 1900 (bought)-(1968)

Brewers Arms (formerly Clappers), Vines Cross: 1900 (bought)-(1980)

HELLINGLY

Potters Arms, Dicker: 1900 (bought)-(1980)

HOATHLY, WEST

Cat: (1825)-(1980)

HORSTED KEYNES

Green Man: (1888-(1980)

ISFIELD

Laughing Fish, see Station Hotel

Railway: (fl 1888)

Station Hotel (formerly Half Moon): (1918)-(1980) (became Laughing Fish in 1950's)

LEWES

Black Horse, Western Road: (1825)-(1980)

Lamb Hotel, Fisher Street: (1888)-(1980)

Lewes Arms, Mount Place: (1825)-(1980)

Old Ship, South Street: (fl 1888)

Postboys Arms, Fisher Street: (fl 1888)

Royal Oak, Station Street: 1839-(1980)

(For deeds 1743-1839, see HIL 6/23/1-20

Stag Hotel, North Street: (1888)-(1940)

Swan, North Street, Cliffe: (1888)-(1919) (sold)

Tally Ho, Landport: 1938 (opened)-(1980)

Wheatsheaf, Malling Street: (1888)-(1966)

White Lion, Westgate Street: (1888)-(1931)

LINDFIELD

Sloop, Freshfield Wharf, Scaynes Hill: (1888)-(1980)

MAYFIELD

Brewers Arms: (1913)-(1980)

NETHERFIELD see BATTLE

NEWICK

Crown Hotel: (1888)-(1980)

NORTHIAM

Rother Valley Hotel: 1938 (bought)-(1947)

PATCHAM

Black Lion: (1888)-(1980)

PUNNETTS TOWN see HEATHFIELD

PYECOMBE

Plough: (bought from Tamplins, 1938)-(1960)

RINGMER

Green Man: (1888)-(1980)

ROTTINGDEAN

Abergavenny Arms, Rifle Butt Road (Black Rock): (1825)-1932

Black Horse, High Street: (1888)-(1980)

RUSHLAKE GREEN see WARBLETON

SCAYNES HILL see LINDFIELD

SEAFORD

New Inn: (fl 1888)

Wellington Hotel, Steyne Road: (1913)-(1980)

VINES CROSS see HEATHFIELD

WARBLETON

Horse and Groom, Rushlake Green: (1940)-(1980)

WORTH

Dukes Head, Crawley Down: (1913)-(1980)

KENT: SOUTHBOROUGH

High Brooms Hotel: 1925 (bought)-(1980)

KENT: TUNBRIDGE WELLS

Abergavenny Arms: (fl 1825)